'doorstepped' by a politician...?

Anyone ever been doorstepped by a politician? In all of my 38 years I have never once had a politician knock on my door. Yet all they ever harp on about is that when they 'knock on doors people are always telling me.....' blah blah blah....

I can't help thinking that they just use anecdotal evidence to back up ideas they know are bollox and the people couldn't give a toss about.

yep. My local MPcampaigned to the doors in 2010. She was always going to be a shoe-in since she took over Michael "1922" Spicer's seat (and he's been in parliament since the Whigs were in). But she listened, and Ive since met her at another event (business networking thingy at the Morgan Car Factory) and she remebered my wife and I. Affable enough and seems to have a good handle on what her constituents want out of her.

a few months ago i would've said the same thing, but then i got 'doorstepped' by the local tory party. figured i'd waste the chaps time by pretending to be interested in the answers to the long drawn out questions i asked him.

as he left the lady tory over the road waved as if she knew me, so i flashed a nipple.

In my old constituency the Labour party had a 'you could stick a dogs arse up for election, if it had a labour rosette on it" attitude. So complacency was the order of the day. The Tories wouldn't even bother contesting it, as it was a lost cause. So we never used to see anyone.

2 elections ago it went to the Lib Dems with an 18% swing! Now you can't move for the campaigners when it comes to elections. There's a whole rain-forests worth of party political letters/leaflets/flyers through the door every day. And there was always someone knocking on your door

We're a pretty safe Labour council ward, but still get visits before elections and pretty frequent 'Street Surgeries'. Met one of our ward councillors in Asda car park this morning while dropping the kids off at school and had a chat.

If you really want to see councillors, find out where they drink. There are two pubs in town where you can guarantee seeing them.

Our MP is very visible locally, and I know her reasonably well via Twitter. We also have a few mutual friends. It helps that she's local; we didn't see Alan Milburn anywhere near as much. if the changes to boundaries come in, I suspect we'll see even more of her, as we'll probably be more marginal.

Oh, okay, I thought this thread was about politicians using the excuse that they 'listened to what the people of Britain are saying' to justify a political argument, not about election doorstepping. Hence comment ^^^^.

Yeah, they come around at election time too. Our MP's a shoe-in even in tough times for Labour. She will never lose. Ever. It's such a certainty that hardly anyone comes out to vote. Liverpool Riverside has one of the lowest turnouts in the UK.

Has anyone who lives in Salford ever seen the most hateful woman in parliament, and quite possibly the country - Hazel Blears?

I certainly never saw the slightest evidence of her ever having been there, all the time i lived there. I get the impression she'd rather be force-fed poo than encounter any of her constituents. Preferring one of her other many homes - all a safe distance away - she financed by defrauding the taxpayer.

You could tell from her condescending, patronising condemnation of the riots that she clearly didn't have an effing clue about what life was like in the area she apparently represents.

I live in a 'you could put a blue rosette on a dog's arse and it would get in' constituency now so I suppose our MP needn't bother devotes his time to other issues important to his constituents. I have been to the pub with the wonderful and proper-ale drinking David Jamieson (labour, Devonport, some sort of transport under-secretary) but I was in a band with his son so that probably doesn't count.

I wonder how much doorstepping you get to do if you are further from London? I be MP's round our way spend half their lives on the train.

Loddrick, do you always vote? If not, there's not much point in talking to you, is there?

The political parties are given official lists showing who's voted, by post or at the polling station - but obviously not how they voted. However, they also maintain records of your voting preference, based on what residents tell them.

So if you're identified as a non-voter, or support "the other side", they'd be wasting their time knocking on your door.

A non-voter is a good person to visit, surely, because they don't have an existing partisan alignment and they might be so floating as to be swung by a doorstepping?

As an aside, the current Washington DC Mayor Adrian Fenty was elected after his campaign involved his campaign knocking on every residential door in Washington DC. My mate wasn't at home when he came by...so Fenty came by a second time and caught him.

To give him his due, I believe David Cameron regularly knocks on the door of his constituents, and takes a great deal of time to address the individual issues they raise. James Murdoch, Rebecca Brooks, Andy Coulson, Elizebeth Murdoch....

I was doorstepped by our labour candidate before the General Election. She denied that there are grammar schools in the area and told us to send our kids (in 10 years!) to the local Academy for 'a brilliant education'.

The next day there was a gang knife fight outside the Academy gates and, that summer, the (closer!) local grammar schools both got in the national top 10 independent schools.

In an ideal world, with lots of party members to help with canvassing, then yes, you are right, Konabunny, it's a good idea to talk to non-voters. But in the real world, there just aren't enough resources to do this.

And Miketually, the big problem is getting your "supporters" to actually vote, so strangely enough, that's not a waste of time.

I wonder what sort of political system we'll have in the UK, when democracy finally dies through lack of interest?

Liberal democracy is based on a market model of politics. If none of the choices are attractive enough for a rational consumer to bother making a choice, that says something about the quality of the offering.

I think we have finally reached a point where you seriously have to ask what the Labour party is actually for? Why does it even exist? Its just a pointless anachronism. The Lib Dems are now just the beardy wing of the Tory Party. And the Tories... well, they're just what they've always been. ****s!!!

The country is run by a PR man. Tells you everything you need to know really

I think we've reached the next step, where we admit that ideology is dead, disband the whole of the political system and just hand over the running of the country to Tesco. At least they'd sort the logistics out

Our local (Tory) councillor is in charge of the local planning committee and decided to refuse our much needed extension on the grounds that it was out of character for our cul-de-sac - a street where no two houses look the same and are notable for the varying sizes and styles of extension on every property except ours.

She then turned up three weeks later and kept gibbering "caravan... caravan... caravan..." in response to every question we put to her about our housing situation - namely we need to find room for my partner's children and her mother in our modest home. The councillor was somewhat surprised when we all told her were she could put her vote too.

As for my local MP, he's a Tory in a very safe Tory seat and as such he's quite useless. There's no harder working MP than one in a marginal seat.

Asked her what her position was on hunting and vivisection - T'was fun watching her descend into a flat spin trying to develop an answer that would appease either side, realise she couldn't, and give a fairly anti answer